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A just released Pew Research chart shows that polarization in the US is growing worse year by year. That means that achieving consensus on key issues is becoming vastly more difficult with the passage of time. Gridlock in Congress is making the country almost ungovernable. With mass shootings becoming so constant that there is almost a [ Read More ]

It is neither hysteria nor understatement to say that while we squabble and fuss, pontificate and divide, special interests continue their inexorable corrosion of our democracy. Despite seeming progress, we are being divided and conquered. Aided by outrageous, non-scholarly rulings of the Supreme Court, special interest dollars now matter far more in elections than the [ Read More ]

The 60 Minutes Benghazi story is a window into the state of corporate media today. Media consolidation, profit pressures, demographic pandering and acquiescence to the wishes of corporate advertisers have all combined to divert the focus from presenting the truth to enhancing the bottom line- and to furthering the agenda of corporate America. Today an [ Read More ]

Both ideology and idealism can blind us to reality. Ideologues maintain their beliefs, often in spite of facts to the contrary. Idealists maintain their beliefs, often in the face of insurmountable obstacles- hope springing eternal notwithstanding. Of the two, idealism has the greater value because it causes us to be open to new ideas and [ Read More ]

The recent defeat of loophole-closing background check legislation in the Senate, despite roughly 90% of the public supporting it, is another blunt reminder that our government is not “for the people” anymore. Regrettably, “government of the people, by the people and for the people” is perishing from the earth. We now elect representatives in gerrymandered [ Read More ]

There have been a variety of responses to the Citizens United decision, including advocating the near impossible task of obtaining a Constitutional Amendment from the very people who benefit from PAC, corporate and other organizational money. There is an alternative that is more realistically feasible. That alternative is wholly within our control, and not dependent upon legislation. [ Read More ]

We Americans are sleepwalking through the theft of our way of life, our future and our democracy. Aided and abetted by profit-conflicted and inept major media, we are misinformed and misled. We have become numb to what should be alarming numbers; 40 million human beings at or below the poverty level in the richest nation on earth; 37th [ Read More ]

To achieve change Socrates said that we need to focus, not on fighting the old but on building the new. That is an admonition that all of America should heed. Instead, we are locked in bitter antagonisms between competing ideologies while problems go unsolved. Angry action begets reaction in a continuing diversion of our energies. [ Read More ]

GOP victories in state house after state house and the resultant focus on austerity and social issues should be a wake-up call to progressives. Despite minor victories here and there, the progressive message is simply not resonating with enough Americans. Recent polls indicate that a majority of them do not support more regulation of the [ Read More ]

The Grand Old Party, once stood staunchly for fiscal conservatism and the preservation of our liberties. But in the words of some of my Republican friends, they didn’t leave the Party, it left them. In order to advance their agenda wealthy individuals and large corporations realized that they had to engage a wider army in [ Read More ]